Brian J. Bennett

Info

Assistant Professor

Research Interests

Key words: systems genetics, cardiovascular disease, nutrigenomics

Chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and atherosclerosis have both genetic and environmental risk factors, but understanding the complex interactions between susceptibility genes and the environment has been difficult. I am particularly interested in using integrative genetic studies, also called systems genetics, to elucidate the genetic component of these chronic metabolic diseases. The goal of this work is to identify individual genes and/or the interaction of groups of genes, also called biologic networks, contributing to chronic disease.

I currently have 2 projects examining novel aspects of atherosclerosis susceptibility. These loci and metabolites were identified using integrative genetic approaches:

Diet is also an important risk factor for chronic disease. A long-term goal of my lab is to understand the interactions between diet and genetics polymorphisms that leads to increased disease risk. An integrative systems approach enables us to evaluate how these, diet and genetics, interact across multiple scales of data (transcriptional, proteomic, metabolomics or even meta-genomic) to affect susceptibility. One expanding technology that provides a possible insight between diet and genetic risk are studies quantifying metabolites. Metabolites are potentially biomarkers of disease and provide mechanistic insight into genes and pathways contribute to disease.

Project 3: Systems approaches to gene/diet interactions

Rationale: Systematic perturbation of diet across a genetic population can identify loci and dietary nutrients affecting atherosclerosis.